


Friends in Low Places

by beautifultoastdream



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: "Hey guys watch this!", Aftermath of Endor, Alcohol, Angst, Bad Decisions, Family, Force hijinks, Found Family, Gen, Horsing Around, Humor, Imported from Tumblr, Missing Scene, More like Bro Squadron amirite, Rogue Squadon, unbetaed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:49:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28658241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifultoastdream/pseuds/beautifultoastdream
Summary: After the Battle of Endor, Leia is having difficulty with the idea of Darth Vader as her father ... and Luke as her brother. Will his path as a Jedi, and the demands of the war, mean that she'll lose another family member just as she's found him? Fortunately, the Rogue Squadron brotherhood have their errant friend well in hand, and hope will last as long as the beer supply holds out.Humor, family, light angst, friendship.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	Friends in Low Places

Leia didn't even bother glancing at the chronometer as she rolled out of bed. Life onboard ship could be confusing for some, with its lack of day/night cycle and the constant ever-intrusive hum of the engines and the air circulators, but after so many years she had become accustomed to living that way. The slight drop in the background noise and the weariness dogging Leia's own limbs put the time deep in the shipboard night cycle—perhaps two or three AM on planet time.

With a sigh, she settled back onto the edge of her bunk, wrapping her robe more tightly around her. She hadn't been sleeping well, which was to be expected: nobody was. Only a week had passed since Endor, and the shock of what had happened was still reverberating through the galaxy. Now, with the Emperor dead, half a dozen Moffs were either making bids for the throne or struggling to consolidate their hold on their own territories. Some systems had pledged support for the Rebel Alliance, some reaffirmed their commitment to the Empire, quite a few had switched sides, too many to count were in flat denial, six had erupted into open civil war, and many of the Rim leftover factions had decided that now was a good time to launch raids against both Imperial and Alliance forces for sheer fun and profit. Endor had been a victory, but the war was far from over, and Leia was in the middle of all of it.

It didn't help that the battle had come almost right on top of a pile of unsettling personal revelations. Luke was her brother—and she had known it, but _how_ had she known it? The Force, it seemed, was more present in her life than she had realized. But if Luke was her twin brother, and Darth Vader was his father (!), then it meant that Darth Vader was also … 

S he disliked that thought, to say the least. She had had a father, a good man who taught her never to compromise on her principles, and he had died when Darth Vader destroyed Alderaan.  How Luke could look at Vader, even the Vader that had once been, and call him  _Father_ was beyond her.

Leia sighed, combing a hand through her unbraided hair.  A lot about Luke was beyond her, and it was worrying her more than she liked to admit. She, at least, had been trained from childhood for politics, and had years of experience in controlling her emotions and hiding her pain long before the Rebellion broke out. Luke had been practically a child until the day he was thrown head-first into the war, and now he was carrying the burden of being the last Jedi Knight as well as Darth Vader's son.  She had no idea how he was handling the strain. 

Perhaps that was how she'd known she was his sister. She was  perpetually  worried he was going to do something insane and get himself killed.

Frowning, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to remember the steps he'd shown her. In time, he said, she might even learn to read minds and move objects, but for now the only thing the Force seemed to do for her was give her vague and irritating flashes of feelings. Still, those could be useful. Another deep breath, and she focused her thoughts towards Luke.

Nothing. She was alone inside her head.

With a huff, she redoubled her efforts. She couldn't truly sense Luke's presence, but something about him had always tended to linger in the back of her mind: a sensation of what he was. Naif, hero, farmboy, pilot, joker, Rebel, Jedi.  A small imprint of him had been left in her thoughts ever since that day on the Death Star … Much like Han's, although for very different reasons.

As she concentrated, she thought she could begin to feel something. Luke was out there. He was awake—unsurprising, considering that he was probably having worse nightmares than her. He was …

A flash of emotion, too fast and too sharp for her to name, and the connection was lost. Leia hissed out a breath between her teeth and swore.

She should go back to sleep. There was too much for her to do, and turning up for the next day's planning meetings with dark circles and a dazed expression would hardly do wonders for the Alliance's morale. But she was too keyed up now, and if something happened to Luke while she was sleeping, she knew she'd never forgive herself. Mentally cursing Luke Skywalker and his danger-magnet tendencies, Leia quickly got dressed and strapped on a holstered blaster.

She didn't know where he was, but her feet seemed to.  Down two levels, across a catwalk, skirting around the massive and sadly-overfilled medical bay.  She moved  easily through the corridors of the massive carrier ship, nodding to the guards on duty and giving the men who  bowed to  her a  soft, dignified smile of regal acknowledgment. 

(They were the men who still called her “princess,” and though it twisted her stomach every time to hear it, she knew she would be their princess until she died. Alderaan was dead; not all of its people were. She owed  it to t hem to uphold what they  had  cherished.)

Despite her expectations, she didn't find Luke in the observation deck. He liked to linger there sometimes, watching the stars—maybe remembering being a boy on Tatooine and doing the same, before the Empire had destroyed  everything .  He'd told her as much, once.  But the observation deck was empty, and her feet drew her on past it, down into the very bowels of the ship.

It was when she reached the hangar bay that the light dawned.

Even at this hour of the night cycle, the hangar would never be deserted. The battle above Endor had greatly taxed the Alliance's fleet, and with many of the Imperial-controlled systems panicking or fighting amongst themselves, the mechanics and engineers had a rare chance to actually make the needed repairs before battle broke out again. All around her, the bays bustled with a dozen species of workers, doing everything from ripping the half-slagged hyperdrive out of a Z-95 Headhunter to touching up the painted TIE fighter kill count on a battle-scarred X-wing.

The pilot of the X-wing was nowhere to be found. However, about a dozen very familiar individuals were, and when Leia saw them,  things became a little clearer

It was hard not to know the members of Rogue Squadron.  Quite apart from their unusual skill and great value to the Alliance, they tended to be loud, boisterous, difficult to  avoid , and even more difficult to discipline. Rumor had it that you couldn't be a Rogue unless you demonstrated your ability to compute a complex gravfield-riddled hyperspace jump vector while c oncussed .  Their current leader, Wedge Antilles, had consistently refused promotion in order to stay with his X-wing. Their former leader, Luke Skywalker, had only left them when the need to focus on his Jedi training became clear—something the other pilots called “settling for second place.”

At the moment, though, Rogue Squadron didn't seem to think Luke had settled for anything. They were grinning too much.  And had clearly drunk too much. They had grouped in a loose circle around him, and one—Janson, Leia thought—was ceremonially tying a blindfold over Luke's eyes.

“Make it tighter,” Luke was saying. “I can still see.”

“Look at you, Lieutenant Overconfident,” Janson said with cheerful sarcasm as he wound another loop of blindfold over Luke's eyes. “Want to try it standing on your head next? Since we're not really challenging the mighty Jedi yet.”

“ Actually, I did something like—“ Luke began. Whatever he was about to say was drowned out in a chorus of laughter and protests from the other pilots.

“Shut up and move, Janson!”

“Twenty creds says he can't!”

“No way, he got the last five, I don't think—“

“Twenty-five says he sticks the landing!”

“You're on, Hobbie!”

“ Anyone checked that droid for tampering? I swear it ain't normal—“

“Nu-uh. Nobody touches the droid. That thing  _bites.”_

“Hey! Janson! I said stop playing with his hair and MOVE!”

Janson, who was by the look of it well into his third ale of the hour, laughed and pretended to plant a kiss on Luke's cheek. Luke, despite being blindfolded, ducked neatly and left Janson kissing empty air.

How could they be drunk? There was a definite whiff of alcohol in the a ir , but intoxicating substances of any kind were firmly banned from the hangar area. Even Rogue Squadron got stopped and searched occasionally.  Leia's question, though, was quickly put aside when two more Rogues came staggering across the  top of the  repainted X-wing with Artoo-Detoo slung between them.

“All right, buddy,” one of them said to Artoo. “You know what to do. I've got forty creds on this, so if you miss  the shot , I'm getting me a can opener. Got it?”

Artoo's response was unintelligible but definitely acerbic.

“I heard that, Natch,” Luke called out. “ And just for that, I'm going to let Artoo have a chat with your ship's computer. I hope you like translating all your lightspeed coordinates into Jawa.”

Natch snorted. “You wouldn't.”

“Try me,” Luke said.

“We'll see.  _Pull!”_

The other pilot swung around to the left, as if he was preparing to carry Artoo with him in a wide arc. Natch, though, cut hard to the right and twisted, forcing the other pilot to loosen his grip. With an electronic yowl of fury, Artoo was dumped head-first onto the deck. A little compartment in his dome had already opened, and the lightsaber hilt he shot went wild.

The instant the saber was airborne, though, Luke reacted. He  _leaped:_ straight up, ten feet or more, turning a somersault in midair as one hand reached out. The lightsaber jerked wildly as its flight reversed. A second later Luke's booted feet hit metal as he landed on the X-wing, saber ignited and in hand.

The Rogues hooted and threw beer cans at him. He cut each one neatly in half before closing down his saber again and giving them an elaborate actor's bow.  Another beer can narrowly avoided bouncing off his scalp.

“Natch,” he said, “please don't do that to Artoo again. Artoo, are you all right?”

The  overturned  droid let out a pathetic-sounding whimper of beeps.  Luke held out a free hand, and with seemingly no effort at all, Artoo was lifted back up onto his wheels. He burbled something to himself, extended his arc welder, and made a charge for Natch's unprotected backside.

“ Nice catch,” Wedge was saying to Luke as the latter unwound his blindfold. “Are you sure you don't have any brothers back home? We could really use fast-twitch reflexes like that in the squad again.”

“ Sorry, the only thing back home is a lot of sand,” Luke said with a grimace. Behind him, Natch was apologizing fervently for mistreating Artoo  while trying to swat out the sparks kindling in his  flight suit . The droid didn't appear to be overwhelmed by his sincerity. “ If you find anyone else with Force reflexes, though, I hope you'll tell me. Seems like more Jedi would be pretty useful.”

“Damn right they would. We could let someone else go face off against the crazy emperors and put you back in a cockpit where you belong.”

“No argument from me. I miss the flying—hey! Artoo, let off. He's learned his lesson.”

Natch clambered awkwardly to his feet. In addition to sporting fresh arc-welder singes,  there  were were treadmarks on his back and face. “Your droid is a menace,” he informed Luke with a grin. “Pass me a beer, would you?”

“Allow me,” Wedge said, giving Luke a bow of his own. “Catch!” With expert grace he palmed a can of beer—resting, Leia noted bemusedly, in one of several upturned stormtrooper helmets filled with cold packs—and winged it towards Natch, who caught it on the fly and drank half of it down almost immediately.

As he looked across his beer, though, the bedraggled pilot's eyes locked with Leia's and widened. “Officer on deck!” he called out.

It was like Rogue Squadron had been galvanized. Their backs stiffed as though reinforced with durasteel rods. The drinks—not just cans, but open bottles and mugs as well— somehow vanished from their hands. In seconds, a group of scruffy-looking but acceptable pilots were lined up for inspection, with one Jedi lingering sheepishly at the end of the line.

Leia huffed out a breath. “It's just me,” she said with a hint of fond exasperation in her voice. “ Commander Antilles. Gentlemen. May I borrow Luke for a minute?”

The Rogues relaxed, though she noticed that the cans and bottles didn't make a reappearance. “Please, take him,” Wedge said, shooing  Luke towards her. “He's driving us crazy. Hanging around, giving us puppy-dog eyes.”

“ What can I say? I miss being crammed in a cockpit and yelled at by Corellian lunatics.” Luke gave a fatalistic shrug. “ Life seems so empty without it.”

Hobbie Klivian gave an aborted twitch of the arm, as if he was thinking about throwing another beer can.  Leia didn't have to look too closely to guess that the pilot next to him—Myrik, she thought the name was—had Klivian's elbow in a death grip. Evidently one did not throw cans, even empty cans, in the presence of Princess Leia Organa.

Which was too bad. Despite the flagrant flouting of regulations, she hadn't seen Alliance personnel having so much fun  since Endor.

“ Luke,” she said, drawing her brother aside and tactfully steering him around the bulk of the dissected Headhunter.  With it between them and the Rogues, they could be assured that they weren't being watched by someone that might put a damper on their fun. “ How are you doing? And what in the stars is going on down here?”

Luke looked down. “I couldn't sleep,” he confessed. “I keep having these visions. Dreams. I don't know. I just wanted to forget everything for a couple of hours.” He scratched the back of his head, looking uncomfortable. “ Rogue Squadron got it pretty bad at Endor. We lost too many people, and the fighters are wrecked. I'm not officially with them any more, but I thought I could help out anyway. I know my way around a multitool.”

“I know,” Leia said. “You've helped fix the _Falcon_ often enough. And somehow this all turned into a party?”

“Well.” Luke wavered a little, torn between Squadron loyalty, sisterly wrath, Jedi honesty, and Rebel survival instinct. “ It was good to talk to them. I mean, they hadn't heard half of what happened with Han—the non-classified parts, anyway—and they wanted all the details. When I told them about hiding my lightsaber in Artoo, they wanted to see how it worked. Then Klivian bet me ten creds I couldn't make that catch again.  When I did it, they started adding the blindfolds and jumps and things into the bet.  And Jorr had a case of Tisaari Pale under his bunk.”

Leia wrinkled her nose. Tisaari  Pale was only one step up from drinking engine coolant in her book. “That probably explains the smell,” she said. “But all of you managed to get this—happy—on one case?”

Luke winced a little at the question. “Do I have to answer that?”

“Well,  _now_ you do.”

“One of the techs, um, makes something. He salvaged some tubing and a few heating coils when we were fitting out the snowspeeders back on Hoth, and the stuff's pretty potent. He says when things cool down, he's going to market it as Rebel Fuel.”

Leia sighed. “Promise me it doesn't make anyone go blind.”

“ If it did, d'you think pilots would drink it?” Luke pointed out,  a touch sardonically.  As he watched Leia's expression, though, his own shifted. “Look—Leia—I know it's against regulations. But we're going to be in hyperspace for another  twenty-seven hours, and even Wedge doesn't take  _that_ long to sober up. I'll take full responsibility—“

“Don't be silly,” Leia interrupted. “I'm not going to tell anyone.” She sighed. “I'm glad you're relaxing, Luke. Really. You've been taking too much on yourself lately.”

“I have to,” he said simply. Then he nudged her, and some of the spark was back in his eye. “Besides, look who's talking. At least I have an excuse for being down here in the middle of the night. Afraid your big brother couldn't handle himself?”

“Hah. We all know I'm the older one.” Leia crossed her arms. “Just promise me you'll be careful.”

He gave her a peck on the cheek. “Always.”

For a moment, Leia considered cautioning him more. From what little she knew of the Jedi, they had been a rather ascetic group, often unwilling to act aggressively and maintaining a scholarly detachment from the galaxy.  Drinking Rebel Fuel from an illicit still under someone's bunk  didn't really seem to fit into that picture. 

Luke sometimes quoted something his mysterious master had said: “Adventure. Excitement. A Jedi craves not these things.” But right now, Luke was using his Jedi reflexes solely for the purpose of showing off and entertaining his friends. Could that take you closer to the Dark Side? How close had he already come, fighting Vader like that?

As she studied his face, though, she pushed her fears aside. She'd never know exactly what had happened on the last day of the Emperor's life, and some part of her was grateful for it; after seeing the war through and tallying up the bitter costs, she had no desire to ever think about the former Senator Palpatine again, let alone meet him or see her brother  _fight_ him. But whether or not Luke had brushed the Dark Side then, it was impossible to believe he was in danger now. His face was flushed and his eyes were bright, and one side of his mouth—only an inch or two from the heaviest wampa scarring—was still curling up in an irrepressible grin.  He looked like the eager young pilot she'd met on the Death Star. He looked  _happy._

Right then, that was all Leia could ask.

“Promise me one more thing,” she said, giving him a gentle prod in the shoulder. “When this is all over, you're going to let me take you  and Han  out for  _real_ drinks. You're down here drinking Tisaari and some sludge brewed up i n leftover heating coils, and I know for a fact that the  _Falcon_ 's maintenance locker is half-full of Corellian rancor piss.” Luke's eyebrows shot up, though whether at Leia's language or the fact that she'd found Han's stash wasn't certain. “If you're going to be my brother, you're going to acquire some better tastes. You're affiliated with the Royal House of Alderaan now.”

“And Han is … ?”

“Han is our friend who's drinking Corellian rancor piss,” Leia replied primly. “It's our duty to teach him better.”

“All right, but if we're doing it that way, that means you're also affiliated with the house of Skywalker. Ever tried  _tak'mida?_ The Jawas make it out of this plant that grows in the Dune Sea, and it' s as thick as engine oil , but if you can make it past the first mouthful—“

“Commander Antilles!” Leia shouted. Half a dozen Rogue heads poked around the side of the Headhunter. “Your associate has clearly suffered a head injury. I hereby remand him into your custody.” She gave Luke a light  shove. “Go play with your friends.”

The Rogues hooted with laughter and promptly surrounded Luke, dragging him back towards the X-wing.  Wedge shared a long look with Leia— _We're not going to get in trouble for this, are we?—_ and when she gave him a small smile of her own, he relaxed and gave her a casual salute. 

“We'll take good care of him, Your Highness,” he said.

“I'm sure you will,” Leia said. And it was with a lighter heart that she turned and made her way out of the hangar.


End file.
